Chapter 459 | What Does That Make You?

Chapter 459: 459 | What Does That Make You?

Brooke finished the croissant in eleven small bites, and Jordan counted every one of them off the crinkle of the napkin behind him. He decided never to tell her that her habits were rubbing off on him, because she would log it and then he would be a data point forever.

"You may turn around now, since I have concluded eating."

He swiveled the chair back. Brooke had folded the napkin into a square so neat it could have passed a military inspection, and a single flake of pastry clung to the corner of her mouth right beside the beauty mark. Jordan pointed at his own lip twice. She touched hers, found the crumb, and stared at it on her fingertip for a full second before she flicked it onto the napkin and went pink all the way up to her ears.

"There is one additional item on the agenda," she said, turning her laptop toward him. "I did not list it on the summary because it is not a legal matter, and I dislike mixing categories."

The screen showed her LinkedIn notifications. Jordan had not known Brooke owned a LinkedIn, although in hindsight of course she did, probably with a profile photo taken against a white wall at a perfect ninety-degree angle. Three alerts sat at the top of the list, each one reading that Cassandra McKnight had viewed her profile. The first came at 7:02 AM, the second at 7:09, and the third at 7:31.

"Your sister visited my page three times before eight o’clock this morning." Brooke adjusted her glasses with one knuckle. "She also downloaded the PDF of my undergraduate research abstract on protein folding kinetics, which has been downloaded four times in total, and two of those were my mother."

"So she’s scared of you now," Jordan said, leaning back until the chair creaked. "That’s great news, honestly, because I’ve been scared of her since I was six."

"I do not enjoy being researched, because I am usually the one doing the researching." Brooke closed the laptop with both hands. "I have prepared a response contingency, and it consists of saying nothing and letting her read my abstract, which is forty pages long and extremely dry."

Jordan grinned so wide his face hurt. Somewhere in San Francisco, his sister was going to open a document about protein folding kinetics expecting a smoking gun, and instead she would get Figure 3.2 and a citation list longer than her lease agreement. Brooke had weaponized boredom, and he respected that more than he could say out loud without making her flee the room.

"You’re incredible, Brooke, and I mean that as a compliment you are allowed to keep."

She stood up fast enough that the chair rolled back a foot, then gathered the pastry box against her chest. "I am going to Physics now," she said toward the door. "Your hair is still damp on the left side, and Chloe was correct, because you do smell like strawberries."

The door shut behind her with a soft click. Jordan sniffed his own collar and got a full blast of Kumiko’s shampoo, which meant he had walked through an entire business exam smelling like a fruit stand. Brooke had not deducted points for it, and he chose to believe that was love.

At 2:31 PM he sat in his Civic in the north structure with the engine off and the harbor air leaking through a cracked window. The navy bomber lay across the passenger seat, because Chloe had texted "navy jacket, not the grey one, the grey one makes you look like you sell crypto" at 11:58, and he had learned weeks ago that arguing with her about clothing was a quest with no rewards. Alexis had sent a map pin an hour earlier with zero words attached. It dropped him on the bluffs at Heisler Park in Laguna, twenty minutes south and well clear of anyone who knew what PCA stood for.

He opened his thread with Chloe and typed with one thumb.

"Leaving for Alexis now, Laguna bluffs. I’ll text when I’m done."

Her reply landed in nine seconds, which meant she had been staring at her phone waiting for it. "Good boy. Don’t be stupid. Listen more than you talk, and if she cries, hand her a napkin and do not fix anything."

A second message followed before he could put the phone down. "I love you. Go."

Kumiko chimed into the group chat a moment later with a single heart emoji, then a second one, then a sticker of a cat holding a tiny sign that said COME HOME. Jordan snorted, pulled on the jacket, and started the car.

Heisler Park sat on a cliff above a cove where the water went from green to blue in stripes, and the wind off the Pacific smelled like salt and somebody’s expensive sunscreen. Palm trees lined a concrete path, and a few older couples walked dogs that cost more than his first semester of books. Alexis Van Der Berg sat on the last bench before the railing with her back to him and her legs crossed at the knee, and even from sixty feet away, she held herself so stiff she could have been carved out of the same rock as the cliff.

She wore a cream cashmere sweater that slipped off one shoulder and wide black trousers with a crease sharp enough to cut bread. Her honey-blonde hair was twisted up in a clip, a few loose strands whipping around her neck in the wind. Oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses covered half her face. Poking out from beneath her sleeve at the left wrist was a frayed grey cuff with a small hole in it, and Jordan stopped walking for a second, because he knew exactly where that hole had come from.

His shirt was here again, hiding under four hundred dollars of cashmere.

Jordan sat down on the other end of the bench, leaving a full body width between them. Alexis did not turn her head.

"You’re four minutes early, and that reads as desperate," she informed the ocean.

"You were here before me, princess, so what does that make you?"

"Do not call me that out here, because there are witnesses and one of them is a golden doodle." She finally looked at him, the sunglasses hiding everything except a mouth pressed into a hard line. "And for the record, I got here twenty minutes ago because I wanted to be sitting down before you arrived, which is a strategic choice and not desperation."

"Sure, that tracks," Jordan agreed, nodding with total sincerity.

Her jaw worked for a second while she tried to find something to be offended by. She came up empty and turned back toward the water. Down below, waves slapped against the rocks with a hollow boom that he felt through the bench slats.

Chloe had told him to listen, so he listened. He sat there with his hands loose on his knees and said nothing, because awkward was free, and he had discovered that a silent Jordan made rich girls far more uncomfortable than a talking one. A gull landed on the railing, eyed them both, and flew off again. Alexis uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other direction.

"Harrison’s parents booked the dinner," she said, her voice lower than he had ever heard it. "It’s March twenty-second at the Balboa Bay Club, in the private room upstairs, and my mother already bought a ring box to show people what size she expects."